2009/06/29

First Day Interning

I arrived back to Taipei last night from my 5-day group orientation (a.k.a. traveling and partying all over Taiwan). I was so exhausted when I came back home that my energy level remained low at work today.

I am still organizing and compiling all of the photos from the trip. The trip itself was quite boring to me since most of the places we visited were in the technology and/or humanities fields - none in the ecology or biology field. Same goes for all the guest speeches we heard. Plus, I am not a big party person or a heavy drinker. So, it was hard to keep me interested for a long time, let alone for 5 straight days. Nevertheless, I kept my eyes and ears sharp whenever we were near natural places and still managed to see some pretty cool stff, so be patient.

Some things happened when I was away from TBG, such as discovering a new nest tree, capturing a new fledgling (but missing another), etc.

The new fledgling that my co-worker caught yesterday. I tried to look for its sibling that we failed to catch today, but I came up short.

This adult seemed to be its parent.

This past few days, my co-worker had been caring for this newborn Red-bellied Tree Squirrel. It must be only a few days old.

Such a small thing

Feeding it milk

Hairless Newborn Red-bellied Tree Squirrel (Callosciurus erythraeus) - 赤腹松鼠
Caring for this baby is such a dilemma (for us) since we will release it back to TBG when it's older, but also knowing the overpopulation issue of squirrels in TBG and the direct predation effect it has on Muller's Barbet as well. Sigh.

Malayan Night Heron (Gorsachius melanolophus) - 黑冠麻鷺
In the afternoon, an adult Malay Night Heron was spotted in the parking lot of our building (right across from the TBG). Some workers saw it carrying sticks in its beak. Maybe it's building a home here?

PS - After thinking and discussing my internship research topic with my supervisor, we decided that 1.5 months is too limited for me to produce a detailed scientific paper. Therefore, we decided to compile and write a short report on the general biology and breeding ecology of Muller's Barbet in TBG, which seems like a very important missing work too. So now, I will have to read a lot of papers to see what kind of variables do biologists usually write about in a general report.
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